On Tuesday's CBS This Morning, liberal comedian D.L. Hughley
claimed that Republicans acted as bullies when they impeached former
President Bill Clinton in 1998, as well as Rep. Joe Wilson when he
shouted "you lie" at President Obama in 2009. Hughley also indicated
that Clinton would have handled Wilson's outburst better, as "he had, to
a greater or lesser degree, been bullied and seen what kind of capacity
he had." [audio available here [1]; video below]
The former CNN host must not have caught the irony of his remarks, as
he has a record of assailing Republicans. In 2009, Hughley claimed the Republican National Convention [2] "literally look[s] like Nazi Germany." Later that year, he smeared former President Ronald Reagan [3] as "the Moses of...greedy white men."
Midway through her interview of Hughley, anchor Gayle King noted how the actor wrote in his new book that "President Clinton could probably give good advice to President Obama." The guest replied with his suggestion that Republicans acted like bullies towards both Democrats:
HUGHLEY: ...He [Clinton] was defeated. He was a very young governor. He
was defeated, came back, and won again. Let me tell you something: it
takes stones to get fired from your job, and still, come back to work
the next day. Like, he was impeached and acted like nothing ever
happened-
KING: (laughs) Yeah-
HUGHLEY: And I think that he had -- he had, to a greater or lesser
degree, been bullied and seen what kind of capacity he had. I think that
President Obama, a good man, hasn't -- when Joe Wilson called him a
liar-
KING: 'You lie' during the State of the Union address-
HUGHLEY: I think that a person who had been bullied would have understood what that moment called for. I do-
KING: And what should he have done, in your opinion?
HUGHLEY: I think that the President of the United States had said, I am
the duly elected President of the United States of America. You don't
have to respect me, but you have to respect this office; remove him from
this premises. It's a different presidency. I do. I believe that.
I believe that bullies look for weaknesses, and they try to exploit
them, and that president -- his presidency became different then. They
believed they had a point of attack.
King didn't mention past attacks on Republicans at any point during the segment.
Besides his attacks on Reagan and the Republican National Convention, Hughley also slammed former President George W. Bush [4] in March 2006: "If I hear one more person tell me how this man is a man of faith, I think I’ll lose my mother-f***ing mind.... When
thousands and thousands of people were being, dying in New Orleans,
this son of a bitch didn’t do sh*t, and that’s very un-Christlike to me." With that kind of record, Hughley has no standing to call out someone else for supposedly acting like a bully.